2nd - 3rd grade\kitah bet - gimel

 

These grades stress fluency in mastery in reading and in arithmetic. Is my child keeping up with the class?

 

The child must build speed and accuracy in reading, writing, and arithmetic in order to progress to the next level of comprehension.  Lack of basic-skills mastery can affect the child's self esteem and cause emotional and/or behavioral problems in the classroom.

 

 

It is important to determine whether the difficulty is due to a developmental issue or to a learning disability in order to know if the child might benefit from remedial teaching or an alternative framework.

 

Testing at this age begins with an unstructured, playful interview. Afterwards, short age-appropriate tests include reasoning tasks, graphomotoric tasks, and number sense. Comprehensive didactic testing in reading examines phonemic and morphological awareness (the sounds and segments that are the building blocks of words), visual and verbal memory, decoding abilities, and reading comprehension.  The child's scores are compared to national norms for similarly aged children in order to determine if the child's abilities are within the range of what is considered to be typical.

 

Interviews with the teacher and a structured observation in the child's class are highly recommended in order to consider a complete picture of the child in his or her natural environment.

 

Overall, early intervention is crucial, so children feel good about themselves and their learning abilties. Often, at this age, learning problems impact a child's social competency as well. Having social difficulties can be a sign of an overall learning diability.